Courses Taught

Profile

Professional Experience
2007 - Member of Institute of Engaged Aging, Clemson University
2002 - 2006 Research Associate, Cornell University
1999 - 2002 Postdoctoral Associate, Cornell University

Research Interests

Aging, Age-related Disorders, and Dietary Intervention: To live long and healthy is a fundamental human desire. With the advent of modern medicine, acute diseases became increasingly treatable, leaving the phenomenon of aging as our major health and lifespan determinant. In most of higher order eukaryotic organisms, aging is an inevitable universal process and associated with gradually declines of the physiological function, which may lead to a variety of age-related disorders. There is a desperate need to find a potent way that can delay aging and associated disorders. As aging is a long-term process, the most prevalent intervention of anti-aging with effectiveness is the supplementation of functional foods. Given that nutrients from functional foods may extensively interplay with genes, understanding the fundamental mechanisms of lifespan regulation in response to nutrients supplementation will provide valuable insights to develop molecular strategies to treat age-related disorders. It is known that many signaling pathways and lifespan determinants will form a sophisticated network to modulate lifespan and healthspan. I hypothesize that the regulatory network of longevity orchestrates the expression of genes in response to the treatment of nutrients from functional foods and thereby to promote longevity and health. Hence, my research centers on the understanding of how the longevity pathways interplay at the molecular level to modulate lifespan and healthspan in response to anti-aging intervention with functional foods.